Panasonic this week made good on their promise to create a plug-in for Final Cut Pro 7 that allows direct importing of Panasonic’s AVCCAM format (a Panasonic flavour of AVCHD) into Final Cut Pro 7. It also allows you to view and play the files directly using Quicktime in the Finder.
Previously, to work in Final Cut Pro 7 with the AVCHD files that Panasonic video cameras create, you would have to use the Log and Transfer function, which would transcode the video into ProRes 422. Now you can natively work with the files without transcoding.
Now I know this is only of interest to a small segment of you reading this, but consider the following. Even though FCP X gives you this same functionality (importing AVCHD video files without having to transcode them first), Panasonic made good on their promise to make this plug-in, even though it’s for the old version of Final Cut Pro. They could have easily said, “Oh well, just forget it, since it’s built in to the new version, let’s just cancel it.”
Panasonic decided to go ahead with it anyway, and support the old version of Final Cut Pro 7. Maybe it was far enough along that it wasn’t a big deal to finish it. Whatever the reason, FCP 7 editors that have to deal with AVCCAM just got a nice bonus functionality, and the ability to hang on to their FCP 7 suite just a little bit longer. Being an AF100 owner myself, and still working with FCP 7, I’m very pleased with Panasonic right now.
You can get the plug-in here as a free download, but if you do own a Panasonic AVCCAM camera, you can also register your camera and sign up for Panasonic’s P2 Asset Support System (PASS) and get regular updates on new drivers, firmware, and plug ins. AVCCAM Importer for Mac requires OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 or better (but not including FCP X).
Source: Panasonic PASS
